The meanderings of a runner, singer, teacher on the road of life.

Yesterday was my 34th birthday. I think I’m gonna call this year the Year of the Miracle. (Like Miracle on 34th Street?? Only instead of believing in Santa, I shall get re-energized in my health and life.) It was a great day. I had two mini desserts at my lunch meeting, spent time working through my blog reader (1000+), listened to some cool podcasts, went to Whole Foods with IronBoyfriend, made a crazy delicious paleo dinner, ate very non-paleo Ben & Jerrys, and then the piece de resistence, Cleaning Out My Closet while watching my favorite episode of The West Wing and simultaneously drinking a can of Sofia through a pink twisty straw. (Yes, that is a super long run-on sentence….)

My dear dear IronBoyfriend must have thought me crazy to take great joy in cleaning out all of the clothes and bags out of my closet and re-setting them. I ended with a lovely clean closet and four bags headed to Goodwill. I did NOT take before pictures for fear of completely appalling you dear reader, but here are my results!

Tee Shirts, sweats, pants, skirts, and dresses organized.

Sweaters and dress shirts hung up and sweaters hung next two extra hangers.

Short sleeved collared shirts hung, bags organized, flip flops basketed, and other shoes in pairs. Belts hung up next to bags of extra toiletries.

(This is from the Great Book Organization of Tuesday!!)

And Celebrated with…..

A lovely can of Sofia. A sparkling blanc de blanc from Coppola in a pink can, complete with individual pink twisty straw! Present compliments of Dad on my birthday!

But what does this have to do with control? Everything. I cleaned out my closet on my birthday because it was out-of-control and I had total control over it. There were no outside forces making my closet messy (except perhaps DBf….) and no one was telling me I could not clean it up. My life is full of clutter, both internally and externally. I cannot fuel my Type A desires for the internal changes fast enough so you bet your bottom dollar I’m going to control what I can externally in order to stay sane.

Internally, I need to clean up the clutter of my diet, my health, my mental state, and most of those too are self-controlled. But…those are the pieces that are the hardest and offer the slowest rewards. So yesterday, external it was, and the result is exhilarating and rewarding. I think sometimes, we just have to control what we can, work hard on the rest, and pray, pray, pray.

If my closet could talk, I think she would say thanks. Now onto trying to fit into these pants (and a skirt) by Christmas….

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”― Albert Camus